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Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Intriguing, Compelling, Poignant and Lyrical : There's No Eschewing the Craft, She Mused

Like all professions book reviewing has a lingo. Out of laziness, haste or a misguided effort to sound “literary,” reviewers use some words with startling predictability.

On Paper Cuts, the New York Times book blog Bob Harris lists seven words which crop up in book reviews with wearying regularity. Readers add plenty more (and maybe you also have some?)... and leave me wondering what's actually left.

Anyway, I also slink away, (somewhat, anyway) guilty as charged and promise to do better next time.

(1) one word that i have only once heard someone using in real life: albeit.

(2) 'to deconstruct' is another word that i see people like to throw around a lot. first, as a fancy pseudo-technical synonym for 'to critique' or 'to undo'. and, second, as a way to pretend being a postmodern revisionist liberal or a derrida scholar.